Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1907 — HIS BROKEN HEART [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HIS BROKEN HEART

Youns McNatt shrugged his shoulders. After a moment in which he enjoyed the novel sensation he shrugged them again, bitterly. He did more—he bit off the end of a cigar and muttered harsh words. Amid it all he felt well satisfied with?himself. He realized that he had taken the situation with all the composure of one to whom being rejected by one’s best girl was an old story and not at all as a novice would have taken it. Callie was the first girl whom he had honored by devoted attentions. For three - months he had looked upon life with the tolerance of the worldling. Was he not engaged? Were not he and Callie to get married some day when he was more firmly established financially? —At~2ff~aiirarp regards as a mere incidental, annoying because of its slimness. He and Callie had a vaguely cheerful, idea that with years come increased salary as a matter Of course. He had galled her “little girl” as he planned out their future and he had grown several inches by realizingthat she depended on his superior wisdom and ability. And after a foolish little quarrel she had decided that she did not love him as she hnH thnnpht. ’ "My dear Charles,” it ran, “after last evening's exhibition of "temper on your part it is better that we should let our dream go. All is over between us. Our lives are sundered hence

forth. Forget me, as I have no doubt you will. It has been a mistake. Do not call, as I am going with Mr. Lester to the theater.” “Tried to make me jealous! Foolish girl!” muttered young McNatt, alluding to the last sentence. “Women are so transparent!” Callie was not quite 18. “Throw me over as calmly as if I were an empty candy box- —and with no more heart! It cuts a fellow up!” He walked to the window and stared hard at the pavement. He was searching vigorously for the emotion he ought to have, crushing back the inslstent knowledge that all he felt was complacency at having arrived at the point where he could get engaged and then have his heart broken by a frivolous girl. “I am well rid of her,” he told a banana cart that was being pushed by. Then he scowled as he had seen a viilain on the stage do a short time before. “But to a man with a heart an ideal is slow to die. She will go gayly oh —with that Lester idiot, I suppose—because she is shallow. While I—ah, perhaps in years to come, Callie, I can blot you from my memory. “A blow just at the opening of a man’s career,” he told himself, with gentle bitterness. “But the world shall uot know, shall not pity me. Naturally things never can look the same to me again, but I shall laugh and go on and pretend to have an in life and no one will know thabl carry a disillusioned spirit, an empty heart, beneath the smiling exterior. I have loved and lost. Well, so be it. I am not one to scatter my affection about. 1 shall never love again—never!” Entranced with the thought of this horrible fate, young McNatt surveyed himself in the mirror. “Pale,” he murmured. “I am sensitive and show when I am moved. Little Callie! Foolish girl! Spoiling her life for a whim. Some day she will know it when it is too late. lam done with women. They have no interest for me now. They are merely an incident and must not be allowed to interfere* with a man’s careen I shall—- “ Hello, Birney!" he broke off, as another youth about his own age entered attired in the latest agony. “Say," remarked Birney,'breathlessly, with no respect for the tragedy in which his friend was involved, “come along with me and call on that LaVkins girl we met last week. She asked me to call and she said to bring you.” , a “Not that stunner —with the blue eyes and——” “The same,” returned young McNatt’s visitor, nodding his head to give greater emphasis to his reply. Young McNatt whistled. “Gee!” he exclaimed. “What luck! I should say I would go! Where’s my hat?”— Chicago Dally News.

“It Cuts a Fellow Up.”